


Safehouse VII

by TheFierceBeast, VioletSmith



Series: Safehouse [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel/Demon Relationship, Angel/Demon Sex, Bottom Crowley, Crowley (Supernatural) Just Wants To Be Loved, Crowley's True Form, Demon True Forms, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Top Castiel, True Form Sex, crowstiel, grace lube, look at their fucking love connection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 16:04:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10857381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFierceBeast/pseuds/TheFierceBeast, https://archiveofourown.org/users/VioletSmith/pseuds/VioletSmith
Summary: They finally do the do again. Cas being Cas is vastly helping Crowley's true form body image issues."Castiel doesn't sleep tonight, but his attention does wander in a way not unlike dreaming. Some time towards dawn his awareness returns to the dark room and the red, four poster bed. The muted candlelight that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, that slinks from shadowy corners like a living thing. Beside him on the bed, Crowley stirs. Castiel glances at him, and sucks in a breath that his vessel doesn't need. Crowley is still fast asleep, still projecting nothing but satiated contentment through the link between them - but at some point in the night his vessel has been slipped off like a dressing gown, and left the mangled, pitiful form of his true body sleeping beneath the blood red covers."





	Safehouse VII

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for vague referencing of torture in Hell.
> 
> Smaychel wrote Castiel, TheFierceBeast wrote Crowley.

Castiel doesn't sleep tonight, but his attention does wander in a way not unlike dreaming. Some time towards dawn his awareness returns to the dark room and the red, four poster bed. The muted candlelight that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, that slinks from shadowy corners like a living thing. Beside him on the bed, Crowley stirs. Castiel glances at him, and sucks in a breath that his vessel doesn't need. Crowley is still fast asleep, still projecting nothing but satiated contentment through the link between them - but at some point in the night his vessel has been slipped off like a dressing gown, and left the mangled, pitiful form of his true body sleeping beneath the blood red covers. His own body, the one that has been ripped apart by Hell and rebuilt in this twisted image.  
  
It's so small. Castiel had forgotten how small, and it looks even smaller here in the huge bed. The light plays across the blackened, leathery skin - makes it gleam. Castiel tries not to move. He doesn't want to startle Crowley, to scare him away.  
  
Next to the demon, Crowley's vessel looks peaceful too, as if sleeping. Vacated, held in whatever arcane stasis Crowley's magicians have granted it, that keeps it incorruptible as a saint, despite its original occupant being long gone. It's strange, to lie there with both of these bodies. The same being, really, sifted into two distinct components, different as salt from sugar. Visually, it would appear that three of them shared the bed - Castiel tries not to think of their conversation last night, tries not to think of Dean. The link between them is sensitive though, attuned to any change of emotion. Beside him, Crowley shifts in his sleep. It's fascinating to watch him, like this.  
  
Castiel observes Crowley's dreams often enough, now, to know that he dreams of Dean. They don't speak of it, though he's fairly sure Crowley is aware that he knows. He wonders what Crowley is dreaming of now. This unconscious disrobing can only be a sign of his great and growing trust in Castiel. It's humbling. Castiel wants to touch him, to gather him into his arms. He reaches out a hand and lets it hover just above the skin. Wonders if he should peek, just below the surface of his sleeping conscious, like pulling back a theatre curtain to steal a look backstage. Crowley stirs, more fitfully. Castiel moves but does not withdraw his hand. Just like his vessel when he wears it, Crowley's true body radiates heat - a little more feverish now than the dry, comfortable warmth that saturates his borrowed flesh. As Castiel watches, the demon jerks, suddenly, twitches and flinches, his newly-regrown eyelids flicking open. The undulating contentment rippling between them changes, abruptly: disorientation, confusion, panic. Crowley's red gaze alights upon Castiel and an insensible little noise of shock jerks from the demon's chest, just as he dissipates into a flustered pop of smoke.  
  
"No!" The word bursts from Castiel, he can't stop it. "Please. Please, you don't have to..."  
  
The bedclothes ruffle, smoke churning beneath them. Castiel puts a hand to his forehead: another unconscious, human-learnt thing. Beside him, the vessel 'sleeps' on, unoccupied. "Crowley?" Castiel says, softly. The red throw shifts. Castiel lifts it a little, like tweaking back the curtain on a sleeper's dreams. Two red eyes burn out at him from the dimness below.  
  
Castiel has never been able to look away from that gaze. The one that seems like it would burn right through him, exposing everything hidden. "Don't be frightened," Castiel begs.  
  
"I'm not frightened." That voice is always a shock, far more so than his appearance. Castiel thinks that if the demon before him were to retain his vessel's familiar purr, he would barely notice if Crowley were to switch between them. "I'm embarrassed." The storm pulsing between them somewhat contradicts this statement: there is definitely fear there. Castiel is too polite to point it out right now. The demon's voice grates. "This is worse than spinach in your teeth at a job interview."  
  
Castiel has spent too long with Crowley. His first instinct is to touch. He clenches his hand into a fist to keep it still. "I like seeing you like this. You know I do." It's rare, rare enough to be precious. "Please let me. I don't want you to be..." _ashamed_ "embarrassed anymore."  
  
"I'd say I'm getting a little too comfortable around you, sweetheart, but, well..." Crowley's dark hairless head appears above the covers. At some point his skull has been shattered, mended badly: it gives the ironic appearance of horns. "This is hardly relaxing." He grunts a laugh. Castiel recognises the sound solely through the accompanying tickle of amusement as the demon at his side curls up small and rests his head back against the deep pillows, bloody gaze fixed on Castiel's face.  
  
This room is so opulent, it belongs so obviously to the Crowley who inhabits the beautiful vessel - all richness and plush decadence. In this form, Crowley looks out of place, even as he tries to pretend it doesn't affect him. Castiel licks his lips. "I want to kiss you," he says. Crowley flinches as if the word hurts him. "May I?"  
  
"You're strange." The demon says, bluntly. His red tongue flicks snakelike across the dry slit of his mouth, a mirroring of Castiel's gesture. Beneath the smooth white sheets, Castiel feels the brittle claw of Crowley's hand alight on his waist. "Go on, then."  
  
The touch is no less thrilling than when he's in the vessel, touching Castiel. Different, but still able to set him alight inside. Castiel leans in - gently, slow, as if Crowley might startle and bolt like a hunted deer. He touches his lips to Crowley's dry mouth and Crowley leans in, awkwardly. The hand on Castiel's waist rests lightly, almost hovering, as if afraid to touch. The air between them fills again with Crowley's longing and regret. His voice is almost inaudible. A scratchy whisper. "How long was I asleep like this?"  
  
Castiel strokes his cheek. The skin is less brittle, since Castiel's grace tried to heal it. "Not long. It was nice, you looked... peaceful." It's still night. Dawn hasn't yet begun. "Are you still tired?" Perhaps Crowley could sleep again. Castiel would watch over him, a guardian, keep him safe.  
  
"You want to watch me, don't you?" That red gaze is unrelenting. "You want to _watch over me_. My guardian angel." Can he read that, through their bonds? The demon's voice twists the words into a sneer, but all Castiel can feel from him is that same longing, a dragging pull of it. Crowley sighs: a dead sound. "Perhaps sleep is one thing this carcass can still enjoy."  
  
Castiel kisses the demon's forehead. "I believe there's much you could still enjoy." Crowley has introduced Castiel to a world of pleasure. Why can't he do the same for this creature?  
  
"Hmm." A dubious grunt. "Easier when I'm driving something that still has all of its external nerve endings." Castiel feels the claw of Crowley's hand drift, light as a dried leaf, over his hip. It caresses the curve of his lower back. He wonders how much of that Crowley can feel. Crowley seems easier, at least, less skittish, when he's under the bedclothes like this.  
  
"Can you not feel this?" Castiel touches feather-light kisses to Crowley's jaw, neck, collar. Drags his lips over the withered skin. "Do you have sensation anywhere?"  
  
He can't help the hitch in his breath when Crowley ducks to press their mouths together again, licks across Castiel's lower lip. "Inside my mouth. They neglected that part."

He tastes of burning, charred stone, gritty and grey. Castiel nods. Every time Crowley mentions, so off-handedly, what was done to him, it makes Castiel feel like he's drowning. It's too much to comprehend, too much to know about and still be sane. What must it have done to Crowley's mind? How did he survive it with so much of himself, his mind and personality, still intact? Castiel remembers Dean, as he was in Hell when Castiel came for him, and he almost succeeds in swallowing down the sob that suddenly fills his throat. Quickly, clumsily at first, he kisses Crowley. Licks his way into that mouth, touches the hidden, intimate depths of it with his tongue.  
  
The sound Crowley makes is the creaking of metal under strain. His tongue feels strangely human, pliant and lithe, a contrast to the dangerous shards of his teeth. It duels with Castiel's tongue; Castiel feels Crowley press closer, feels the raging heat from his emaciated body, as if Crowley is forgetting himself. Castiel wants him to forget. He strokes Crowley's tongue with his own, a slick back and forth that feels overwhelmingly like sex. When he tears his mouth away, it's to replace his tongue with his fingers - two fingers in Crowley's mouth, touching his tongue and the inside of his cheeks.

Crowley's eyes narrow. The hand at Castiel's waist tightens, the hard points of his fingers pricking against flesh, pulling Castiel closer. His tongue dances, lapping between and flattening against Castiel's exploring fingers, fluent and wet. His mouth is so hot, soft behind the jagged barrier of teeth that catch against Castiel's knuckles. Castiel coaxes him closer, into his arms. He runs a hand down Crowley's spine. He can feel the bumps of it, the places where it's fractured and twisted. His hand comes to rest on the skinny backside - so different to the vessel's plump, shapely curve. And Crowley makes a small sound, around Castiel's invading fingers. Tenses again, bony fingertips digging harder into the smooth skin at Castiel's waist. "Shh," Castiel finds himself murmuring. "It's alright. I won't do anything you don't want."  He shifts them both, until Crowley is on top of him, between Castiel's legs. There is no erection pressing against him, no penis. No luxurious skin or thick body hair. Only the rag-and-bone of the creature, tiny and frail and impossibly light. "Tell me to stop and I will."  
  
He's silent. Frozen motionless. His essence feels strange, a hollow dropping kind of inertia, like the moment at the top of a flight of stairs before you catch yourself, or fall. The feeling stretches, elastic and frightening. Without anchor. Crowley's hands brace either side of Castiel's head, dark and spidery against the plump white pillows. His eyes are closed. Castiel strokes him again, from his shoulders downwards, down to the place between his legs. He remembers Crowley making love to him, putting his penis into Castiel's vessel here; how shocked he'd been by the pleasure of it, how overwhelmed. He wants to bring pleasure like that to this creature. But doesn't want to hurt him, to add more pain to an already pain-wracked body. Crowley shudders, and it's not with hurt - although not entirely in enjoyment either. Each of his twisted joints seems locked, he's primed for flight, and Castiel can only expect a face-full of scarlet smoke at any moment if this tentative coaxing becomes too much for him. "Cas... I may be misreading this situation, but... why are you doing this?"  
  
Guiltily, Castiel draws his hand away and rests it on Crowley's lower back. "I enjoy touching you. I want to bring you pleasure. The first time I... came to this house, the things you did to me. It felt good. I'd never experienced anything like that." How smug he'd been, believing himself above such base urges and physical pleasures. Crowley had taught him the error of it. "I want you to feel it too."  
  
Crowley's head tilts, like a cobra preparing to strike. Perhaps it should be terrifying, or at least repulsive, to be lying beneath this creature. But Castiel is accustomed now. Quickly accustomed. "Let me get this straight, Feathers. Just last night you had me," he glances at his vessel, still curled demurely beneath the sheets next to him. "Dolled up in frilly knickers, on my back _begging_ you to have me. And yet _now_ you want to fuck me?" The words sound harsh in the demon's abrasive voice: Castiel can't help but wince, even feeling how Crowley is incredulous, not angry. Crowley's voice is the same harsh tone as he asks, hesitant, "why is it that you so favour this ruin Hell made of me?"  
  
Castiel frowns. "I'm not human. Stop judging my preferences by their standards." He dips his fingers down again, searching for an entrance. Grazes fingertips over it, and holds Crowley steady when he stiffens in Castiel's arms. "Whether or not I choose to put a borrowed human's penis inside it, I find your vessel captivating. But it doesn't bear any more resemblance to my species than this form in which you now appear. Do you understand?" Crowley is cringing, although Castiel has not raised his voice. "Perhaps my true form would repel you. Perhaps you would find it monstrous."  
  
"I like it when you're stern, darling. Gives me a cheeky tickle in my special place." Castiel narrows his eyes at him and Crowley sighs. "I know what an angel looks like. I've... almost.... seen you. And you're beautiful. A beautiful monster. I'm a..." He trails off, like what comes next is something he won't admit to himself. "I'm a lot of things, practically all of them marvellous, but this old body just isn't one of my strong points. No need to sugar coat it: demon. Now..." Crowley swallows, closes his eyes and cautiously rocks his hips back against Castiel's cradling hand, "have your way with me. You have my expressed permission."  
  
But you're beautiful, Castiel wants to say. Terrible and beautiful, like death. "Tell me what to do. I don't want to hurt you." Castiel is familiar with the mechanics of this act, he believes. But has little practical experience of it - and Crowley feels brittle, as if even the gentlest touch might cause him pain.  
  
Crowley reaches back and catches his hand. Clasps it, whispery-dry. Guides it between his legs. When he speaks, it's hesitant. "You'll have to be... Careful. I've not done this... I mean, like this..." His eyes are closed again. His essence forced to calmness, like he's holding himself together with effort. "Just touch me. Gently. Don't rush. I'll tell you if anything's amiss."  
  
"Gently," Castiel echoes. He can be gentle. His fingers flutter against Crowley's skin. The silvery strands of grace between them shimmer. "Can you feel it?" Castiel whispers. "All that I've left in you?" He lets it pool, uses his will to gather it at his fingertips - silky and insubstantial, like a filmy liquid on the surface of the skin. It's slippery. Smoothes Castiel's touch on Crowley's dry and fragile body.  
  
"I can feel it all the time, angel." It's the first time Castiel has heard anything like a whisper from the demon. Perhaps it's the first time he's been able. "You've marked me. It's glorious." The slight cage of his ribs expands: Castiel places a hand against his chest; filled with dust where there once was thriving life. His skin feels softer. Some give to it. Crowley rocks back against him, like the previous night, showing Castiel how and where. He feels impossibly small, here where Castiel is easing a finger into him. He clings, hot and narrow, and it seems inconceivable that Castiel will fit in him. But there is give in the muscle, elasticity. Castiel tries to tease it out, encourage Crowley to give in to it as his mouth opens and closes around silent gasps. "May I touch you?" A whisper again, the new expression in his grating voice terribly reminiscent of his vessel's. And Crowley bites off a groan as one fingertip breaches him, just the very tip.  
  
"You can always touch me," Castiel replies solemnly. Crowley's touches leave soot-black smears on Castiel's grace - an invisible mark that only other angels would be able to notice. It's blasphemy to even think it - but Castiel _likes_ the sensation. He wears Crowley's bloody fingerprints like jewels, shows them off. Preening. _This is my lover._ He works his finger in deeper, all slippery with grace. This is where his vessel's penis will go, he thinks. Here in this snug heat, where the demon is greedy and soft. Arousal floods his belly. He allows his penis to twitch, start to fill.  
  
" _Cas_ ". That hunger tells in Crowley’s voice, in that clutching drag that pulls him in as Crowley hitches his hips, tries to take him deeper. It's agonisingly slow. Crowley's hands caress Castiel’s waist, tracing ticklish lines down the cut of his hips. Become emboldened by the welcome of his grace, stroking through the soft dark curls between his legs. "Oh, angel." Unholy little moan. Crowley's touch on him is light as feathers, fingers stiff and thin as feather-shafts. "Is that for me?"

Castiel nods helplessly. It aches, this sudden stiffness. He's unused to it, doesn't normally allow it to happen. It feels a little unsettling, like losing control. Distracted, he pushes his finger in a little deeper and quicker than he means to. The tightening of sharp fingers on his hips snaps him back to attention. Crowley reaches back, takes him gently by the wrist, easing them apart. He shuffles backwards. The movement drags the bed sheets down. Bares them both a little more. Red eyes look hopefully up at him. "I'd very much like to taste you."  
  
Castiel lets out a breath he doesn't need. His gaze hurries up and down Crowley's body. Lingers on his mangled crotch. "Likewise."  
  
Crowley's eyes flicker shut again, at that. Then they open, hot as lava, surveying the view, before Crowley's mouth is on him, his tongue painting a long decadent stroke up Castiel's aching erection, from base to tip. Castiel's mouth falls open. It feels like he's never been touched so intimately. Crowley's tongue is so wet that it eases the friction of it, makes it feel entirely unlike being touched by a hand. He feels blown open by it, exposed. He wants to close his legs, to hide himself from view.

"So gorgeous, kitten." Crowley's aura blooms, exulting, so full of desire. If Castiel closes his eyes, physical and otherwise, he could forget what form his lover currently displays. Sharp teeth touch him delicately as Crowley takes him fully into his mouth, working him with his tongue, an ocean rhythm, rolling and cresting. That's exactly how Castiel feels - Crowley's kitten, his angel, his. He's never felt this depth of belonging; even his loyalty to Dean can't compare. Crowley's mouth is soft and sleek and messy on him, Castiel can't seem to keep still under it. He's squirming, hips twitching, reaching for some rhythm he barely understands. Crowley draws back, the flat of his tongue teasing across the swollen head of Castiel's erection. Castiel feels a cool shock of air - Crowley blowing across the spit-wet tip of him - looks down to see the demon grinning, all glinting needle teeth. _Happy_. "You're delicious, you know that? Seeing you like this-" a kiss, tongue working, sloppy, up his shaft, "feeling you _want_ it." Castiel's hips lift as Crowley's mouth wraps around him again. Strokes him up and down, effortless and talented. "Nothing gets my motor running more than seeing you turned on, love. It makes me want things."  
  
Castiel swallows heavily. He feels blurred at the edges, hardly able to focus. Utterly adoring. Every part of him is focused on Crowley; yearning for him. "What do you want?" he asks, in a voice thick and growly with lust.  
  
"You." Crowley tilts his head, eyes slipping closed as his tongue laps. "Inside me. You've got me burning up, pet. Let me show you what I can do for you."  
  
Castiel reaches out a hesitant hand and touches Crowley's waist. "Will you be able to enjoy it? I want you to enjoy it."  
  
"I want you, Castiel." Crowley repeats, in his demon's monotone. They're both aware, Castiel knows, that it's not an answer to the question asked. But - perhaps it is. Crowley moves more easily now. Not the predatory grace of his vessel: something quicker, more alien. He straddles Castiel's thighs, reaches back and takes hold of Castiel’s penis, angling it to rub against him, there where he's all slippery with the echoes of Castiel's adoration.  
  
It's too easy to rub against him, to press forward, let the head of his cock catch on the rim. Castiel is shocked by how much he wants this. How the body can carry him along on its desires, make him helpless. "I want you, too," he says, voice broken with it. "I want to be inside you."  
  
Crowley bends forward. Cups Castiel's face in both skeletal hands and Castiel leans up into his kiss. He's seen Crowley in many guises, playing many roles. Now, his essence is brimming with the white light of joy. Now, when he's truly naked and raw before an angel. They both moan as Crowley sinks down, taking Castiel's body into his. It's brutal, Castiel thinks, even more so than the last time. Crowley is tight, hot, pulsing like flames. Castiel can hardly bear it. He tries not to grip too tight at Crowley's waist, lets his hands fall to the bed. He fights not to thrust up into the heat of him. It's all his body wants - to be deep within his lover. To move in him. He tries to be still, instead, to let Crowley set the pace of their coupling.  
  
Crowley rolls his hips, slow and measured. Practiced. Even though, "My first time. In this body." He makes a sound, a satisfied kind of purr and Castiel feels the snug clench of him, sheathing him to the hilt, rocking shallow and gentle. "There's a lovely symmetry to that don't you think, angel?"  
  
Castiel has no human attachment to the concept of virginity, but he's glad - unspeakably glad - that he's the first to do this. Because that means it wasn't one of the things taken from Crowley by Hell. He shudders out a slow exhale. "You feel..." he shakes his head, as if forbidding the words to come. "Like Hell. And Heaven. All muddled into one strange place I can't escape from." His penis _aches_ with the sweetness of it. "How can anyone bear it?"  
  
"Do you want me to stop?" Crowley leans forward, pulling off Castiel's length a little further, easing back down, an exquisite glide. The connection between them twins the pulse Castiel can feel where their bodies are as connected as their essences, like a tiny heartbeat. It's clear that Crowley is confident of his angel's answer as he picks up his pace a little, his body surrendering, adjusting, _welcoming_.  
Castiel can't make words. Human language is beyond him. He grips Crowley's hips - _gentle,_ he reminds himself, _be gentle with this fragile creature_ \- and his grace sings a reply directly into the core of Crowley.  
Crowley moans. Tips back his head on the ossified column of his neck, his mouth dropping open. His thighs feel solid as onyx under Castiel's shaking palms, but hot - fire-warmed. Perhaps he isn't so fragile, Castiel thinks. This creature compressed by Hell to something hard and dark. Forged. Perhaps he just craves tenderness. "Cas..." His movements are more urgent now, an insistent repetitive rubbing over the same sweet sensitive spot and Castiel is bursting with it, a ringing high note so crystal clear it hurts. "You're filling me with light."  
  
Castiel wants to inhabit Crowley. To possess him. To always be within him, in one form or another. "Tell me you like it," he manages, and his voice seems to seep out of the walls. "Tell me it pleases you."  
  
"God, Cas... Yes. It pleases me." Crowley's voice is rubble, destroyed. He groans, hips rocking. His raw red eyes blaze. "You please me." His claws clutch, pressing over Castiel's hands, holding them to his hips and encouraging Castiel to move him, harder, rougher. "So good... So close."  
  
It feels like Castiel could break him in two. But underneath the black, brittle flesh is enough power to withstand even Castiel’s ardour. He grips him tight - jerks him up and then down again, once, like a rag doll.  
  
The noise he makes is something like a sob, but the feeling that floods between them is pure, satisfied release. Relief. His body tightens around Castiel's: his grip on the hands of Castiel's vessel almost painful as Crowley rides out his completion in waves like drowning. "Cas." The way Crowley says his name is reverent and possessive at once. When he pulls Castiel's hand to him, still rocking rhythmically on Castiel's length, the place where his genitals once were is slick, wet.  
  
Castiel runs his hand through the wetness, massaging Crowley there with the heel of his palm. The sounds Crowley makes at his touch are almost pained. Castiel would be worried if he couldn't feel the pure white pleasure radiating through the link they share.  
  
Crowley's chest heaves, the broken lattice of his ribs expanding and contracting drastically. He _growls_. Still moving. "Angel... Do you want to..?"  
  
"Yes," Castiel moans. "Yes. Crowley. I want..." He surges up, tipping Crowley onto his back. He thrusts into him deeper, now, rougher, a clumsy animalistic rhythm he seems to have no control over, chasing the edge of some precipice he only knows he wants to tumble over.  
  
Crowley _revels_. Clutches at his shoulders, his essence frilling and shimmering, glowing bright as fool's fire. The thin, notched legs wrapped around Castiel's hips feel stronger than they should. _Determined_. Each thrust punches a harsh breath from the demon beneath him: Crowley's pleasure is building again, Castiel can feel it, primed like fireworks. "Give it to me. Cas. Fill me up."  
Castiel roars when he comes, more lion than human. His eyes glow, unnaturally blue. He closes them, not wanting to hurt Crowley, but light spills out between the lashes. He fills the red, soft space inside Crowley with wetness, feels the slick glide of it with every thrust his body is still making and Crowley _purrs_. Arches beneath him. His jagged limbs crack as he stretches, luxuriating. The whole of his body, his being, embracing Castiel's. It's overwhelming.  
  
Castiel stills. His penis - slowly, sensitively beginning to soften - is still inside Crowley. He takes a moment to wrestle himself fully back into the confines of his vessel. Crowley's skeletal fingers are stroking his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. "Is that what you wanted from me?" Castiel asks, and his voice is trembling.  
  
Crowley leans up. Kisses his forehead, gentle as dried leaves. "Yes." He shivers as he moves, carefully, to separate their bodies. Their essences remain joined, swirled into one another. "Was it so terrible, love?" He urges Castiel onto his back once more. Fusses the covers over him.  
  
Castiel shakes his head, allowing himself to be fussed over. "It was beautiful," he says, with utter honesty. "Just... a little overwhelming." So much physical sensation. Castiel is unused to it. It's disconcerting, for all that it's also pleasurable. A little, he thinks, like Crowley's smile in this form: the unfamiliar razor-edged crescent he's currently displaying. Beautiful. Horribly so.

"I won't ask it of you often. Cross my heart." _But I do want it again._ The implication hangs, unspoken. _If you'll have me._

  
Castiel watches as Crowley slips from beneath the sheets, crawling to the foot of the bed rather than climb over him, or his own vacant vessel. His aura is as calm now as if he were wearing it. Castiel glances to the side, at the soft, slumbering face. A noise draws his attention. Crowley is standing at the foot of the bed, pulling on his robe - it swamps him ludicrously, now - and still grinning. "Don't get any ideas while I'm away, cupcake. No touching the merchandise unless I'm in there to enjoy it."

  
Castiel wonders if Crowley ever touches it, from the outside. He wonders what that would look like. The vessel with its plumpness, all peachy and soft. Crowley's demon body, charred and broken, grasping at beauty and decadence. "Yes, Crowley," Castiel agrees, sleepily, and nestles down into the bed covers.  
Fondness radiates, touches him like a warm breeze, long after Crowley has left the room. Castiel isn't sure how long he's gone: he fades in and out, not sleeping, but letting his attention wander, lulled by comfort.  
  
When Crowley returns he's preceded by the sugary smell of sweetened milk and cocoa. It's faint, but Castiel is an angel. His senses can detect atoms hovering in the air far before a human could smell them. He sits and watches Crowley re-enter the room. His gait is uneven, a sort of limping shuffle, but he manages somehow to still be graceful. To not spill anything he's carrying.  
"Hot chocolate for breakfast. Because we're grown-ups and we can do what we want." His grin is the same ever broken rictus, but Castiel can almost see the smirk it wants to be. Crowley perches on the edge of the bed closest to Castiel. His hands are wrapped fully around each mug to keep them steady and Castiel knows before he takes one that they would be far too hot for a human to hold like that.  
  
Castiel takes a mug and inhales the sweet steam that rises from it. He tucks his knees up in front of him, his back against the pillows and the ornate headboard. "Thank you," he says, dutifully, like a child that's been taught good manners. Truthfully, he has always found hot chocolate a little too sweet. It's the sort of drink that Dean would dismiss as _girly_ , but Castiel had tried it a few times with Nora at the Gas-n-Sip, gurgling from the vending machine into a beige plastic cup. It had never been this hot. Something about health and safety. And it had left Castiel’s mouth feeling sticky, tasting of stale milk powder and corn syrup.  
He blows on the surface, as he's seen humans do many times, and glances up to see Crowley gazing at him with what might be amusement on a face more capable of expression. Blushing, for reasons Castiel can't name, he looks away and takes a gulp of his drink. It's scalding hot. It would burn his mouth, if he let it. And bitter, too - bitter and dark, and thick. Better than the gas station vending machine, by far.

  
"Good?" Crowley asks. Castiel nods. Crowley supports himself with a hand on the red throw, crosses his legs, awkwardly at the knee. It looks weirdly more human than it would on Crowley's vessel. The demon takes a sip of his own drink. Tilts his head. "I might take a bath. It suddenly strikes me I've been neglecting this body something criminal. It doesn't even have a moisturising regime." His eyes glint.

  
Castiel likes baths. Likes them a lot - too much, maybe. Ever since Crowley introduced him to the pleasures of hot water and sunken, black marble tubs. He glances at the peacefully vacant vessel lying on the bed, then back to the abomination before him. "You should. Baths are very enjoyable. I never understood, before - I assumed the act of bathing was purely functional."

  
The demon grunts a little laugh. "Even monkeys groom one another, kitten. Even angels, from what you've shown me. Demons, not so much. Thank you for reminding me." The hand on the bedspread sidles, spider-like, to rest against Castiel's arm, as if Crowley can't bear to not be touching him on every level. It's a far cry from how he hid this twisted form for so long.

  
Castiel wonders why demons don't groom each other. They don't deny themselves pleasure - Crowley is proof of that. But perhaps they deny themselves generosity. Pleasure must only be selfish. Castiel frowns. It's a strange thought. He wonders how Crowley reconciles their relationship to himself, how he justifies it. Castiel covers Crowley's emaciated hand with his own. "Yes," he says. "We groom each other. Or... did, before."

  
"Don't suppose there's any chance of a back rub in the tub, darling?" Castiel is getting too used to that grin. Too used to all of this.

  
Castiel's head tilts to one side. "You want me to groom you?" He runs his hand up Crowley's arm, feel the texture of it under his fingers.  
  
"When you put it like that, it sounds weird. Your flirting needs work, angel. Drink your chocolate." Crowley hides his smile behind his mug. Leans into Castiel's touch.

  
"Yes, Crowley." It's very rich. Much more so than Castiel is used to. It makes him feel sleepy and full, and he blinks up at Crowley slowly.

  
"Useless creature." The fondness of his tone completely belies the words.  Holding his mug carefully, Crowley shuffles further onto the bed. "Tell me about Heaven?"

  
"Heaven..." Even saying it brings a small pang of something that isn't quite regret. "What would you like to know?"

  
"What was it like? What were you like?"

  
"It was blissful, and I was obedient." Although, as with every story, there was a little more to it than that. "There were multitudes of angels, all in perfect communion, and I never knew loneliness or doubt."

  
Crowley regards him gravely. "And now you know great heaping piles of both, eh?" The charred scratch of fingers strokes Castiel's hand. "Guess it's not the same upstairs now?"

  
Castiel shakes his head. It's a very small gesture. He stares down at Crowley's hand. "It is very different. And I have to accept responsibility for a good deal it. Much of what happened was my fault."

  
"It would have happened anyway, you know." Crowley says, quietly. "If not you, Raphael. Naomi. Take your pick: you've plenty enough morons in your family. It's been on the skids for millennia. You're just the kid blaming yourself for mum and dad's divorce."

  
Castiel shrugs awkwardly. He isn't here for absolution. "Things couldn't continue as they were. We were content, but not free." And he's starting to believe that many of his brothers and sisters weren't even as content as they had seemed to be. "I don't regret what has happened. Not all of it, at least. But... I miss it, at times. Things were simpler, I knew my place and my purpose."

  
"You can have a new place and purpose," Crowley says. It sounds absent, almost like he's thinking aloud.

  
"Can I?" Castiel looks up at him, meeting his blood red gaze. "I've been searching for those things for a long time." For so long he had convinced himself that the Winchesters were the answer to both. That by assisting them he could somehow earn a place in their family, as the mermaid in the children's story earns her soul by serving humanity.

  
"Serve yourself only. You'll never be lost then." Crowley says. His skinned eyes shine, wetly. The link between them tugs so keenly that Castiel splays a palm on the mattress to steady himself. Crowley rarely says what he means, even here, in private. But now he doesn't have to.

  
"I've always been lost." Castiel can't look away from Crowley, he feels helpless under that gaze. "I just didn't realise it for a long time."

  
"And now you've followed me home. Looks as though I'll have to keep you, kitten."

  
"Do you want to keep me?" Crowley is a demon, Castiel an angel. There may be no way for them to keep each other, Castiel knows. The barriers to their relationship are many. It may be beyond their control. But if Crowley _wants_ to keep him, if Castiel could know this and hold the knowledge close and safe inside himself... that would be enough, he thinks.  
  
He expects a very Crowley answer. Sarcasm, or deflection, or simply no answer at all. The thread that binds them tugs again, sweet and longing. "Yes." Crowley's hand on his squeezes, warm.

  
On an impulse, Castiel lifts Crowley's hand to his mouth and kisses it, once. Lets his lips linger on the roughness. "Thank you," he murmurs.

  
"I'll see to that bath." Crowley says. Awkward even as his essence blooms with something Castiel daren't put a name to.

  
"Would you like me to come with you? To..." How had Crowley put it? "To wash your back."

  
Crowley's smile is as gentle as his fierce face allows. "Nothing would please me more."


End file.
